Review - Isles of the Forsaken

As regular readers of this blog may know (if there ARE any of you who are not Russian referral spammers), I regularly take chances on books by new authors, including authors I've heard nothing about.  Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman is one such.

It took me awhile to read this book, although I *wish* I could have read it faster, I just suffered from lack of time (catching up on editing my manuscript, visitors from out of town, etc.).  Because overall, my impression is quite favorable.

I found the main characters (Harg, Nathaway, and Spaeth) to be mostly sympathetic, although there is something I still don't get about Spaeth and I hope we hear more about her in future books.  (I'm not quite sure what it is I don't get about her, but it may be because she is a magically-created person, instead of having been born and raised in the normal way, and she's of a minor, almost mythical race, so in a way, she is meant to be alien, and she does seem alien a lot of the time.)

The main conflict of this book is of a colonial uprising against an empire.  Harg represents the natives; he was in the navy of the empire, though a separate "native" section (much as African Americans used to be part of separate military units before the integration of the armed forces).  He retires and hopes to go home and be done with the Innings (the imperial power) but he's drawn back into the conflict.  Unless I'm completely missing the mark though, Harg lusts after many inaccessible women -- Calpe, who is married, Spaeth, who is also an inappropriate target -- when one who wants to be with him -- Tway -- is right under his nose.  Nathaway is the youngest son of a family which hold several powerful positions in the empire -- his father is a very important judge and his brother runs the navy.  He's also a failed law student, though he believes the law is very important.  He represents imperial power at first, but as he spends time among the native islanders, he becomes drawn into events (sometimes he's manipulated), and by the end of the book, has put himself into conflict with members of his own family.

Further complicating factors are that there are two races of islanders (Torna and Adaina), not just one.  Most of the rebellion forces we see are Adaina, and there has always been some conflict between the Torna and the Adaina peoples.  It seems to me that members of the Torna race are more often collaborating with the Innings, to the detriment of the Adaina.  It was sometimes difficult for me to remember which characters were Torna, although it was easy to understand the differences between the two peoples.

I mentioned earlier that Spaeth was a member of a minor race, the Lashnura.  She was created by another Lashnura, Goth, who is imprisoned and thus unable to be a major force throughout most of this book.  The Lashnura are really the only ones who exhibit anything that could be called a magical power; through rites involving blood, they heal or remove the pain from others (this appears to be psychological as well as physical).  They have a need to do this; if they don't, a blackness that begins at their fingers travels up their arms and will eventually kill them.  They also seem to take some kind of joy in it.  Others tend to want to use them selfishly, which is perhaps not surprising.  Spaeth struggles with this; when Goth was around, he performed all of these functions for the locals.  When he's gone, the people start demanding it of Spaeth, and she is resistant for a long time.  It seems to be mostly Adainas who interact with the Lashnura in this way.  Meanwhile, the Innings, who have an empire of laws, do not support the practice.  Most of this conflict happens early on, between Spaeth and Nathaway, but larger events in the world (and changes in Nathaway) push this element of the plot to the sideline relatively early on.  It's not dropped, exactly, and it's not bad that it's pushed aside, I'm just stating a fact here.

Side note: I get a little confused by "dhota" and "bandhota" and all the terms related to Lashnura blood rites.  I can follow it enough to have a general idea of what's going on.  And I suppose it's good that the reader is not beaten over the head with repeated explanations of these concepts, as I do hate it when that occurs in other books.  I think if I keep reading this series, I'll eventually have it straightened out.

I was reminded periodically of City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton as I read this book.  I think it was just the general setting -- an island (or set of islands) facing a rebellion against an empire, with political intrigue, and a member of the empire (Brynd from Newton's book, Nathaway and Harg both in a way, from Gilman) being faced with fighting against an empire they know well.  The darkness of certain scenes (involving the gangs and criminal element from City of Ruin and the exploitation of the Lashnura in the city in Isles of the Forsaken) also was a commonality.  There are also different realms which can be traveled to in both books.  Although really, that's where the similarities end (thankfully Gilman does not make use of giant crab people).

There are gods, or forces like gods, in Isles of the Forsaken, two sets of opposing groups, one of which seems generally beneficent and one which seems more maleficent, although there is a sense that the motivations of these groups are not human, and I expect to see more development of concepts surrounding them in the sequel(s).  I do like the idea of these forces or groups of forces instead of artificially-created gods, which to me are much less believable and much less enjoyable to read about.  (Made up religions usually end up having concepts from Christianity or some other religion renamed and repurposed and are not particularly original.  So I'm glad Gilman stays away from that.)

Gilman is a historian and I think she brings that experience to bear in creating the world of this novel.  Apparently she knows quite a lot about the Lewis and Clark expedition, has even written a book on it, I think.  The level of technology includes guns, which is fine if it's done right (Gilman does it right, I think).  Her descriptions of forts and tactics to take them make sense, seem as if they could've happened in real life.  (The Torna and Adaina races could represent different Native American tribes, actually, now that I think about it.)  So this is one case when research was done -- or facts were just already known -- and it makes the world much more cohesive and believable.

I like Gilman's writing style; she's good at sneaking in a lot of little details that make the world more believable and the reading experience much more pleasurable.  I don't notice any grammatical errors, though there is one weird thing -- Gilman lives in Missouri, but has a Canadian publisher (ChiZine Publications), and it's Canadian/British English that we see, rather than American English, especially in things like the spelling of certain words ("colour" versus "color," for example).  It's like the editor went back and changed everything.  Obviously I'm capable of deciphering either system, but so are other readers.  (I guess I'm used to scientific journals where you're allowed to use either as long as your paper is internally consistent.)

All-in-all, I thought this was a great book and I'd recommend it to most fantasy readers out there.

Kirkus Reviews

I took a break from making videos of my cats to find some new topics for blog posts because I now have exactly 0 spare posts in the pipeline.  I came across the Kirkus Reviews website.

They call themselves "the world's toughest book critics."

Well, they aren't.  In fact, I think Harriet Klausner gives them a run for their money.  (And no, that's not a compliment.)

I managed to find reviews of some fantasy novels through searching their site.  Of course when I saw Bearers of the Black Staff, I thought, well here's a chance to see what I think.  And I was not impressed.  One sentence telling us who the author is and that he's returned to the Shannara universe.  A semi-long paragraph which is mostly plot summary, followed by some unjustified praise (the battle scenes are expertly handled?  did we read the same book?), and a final summary sentence ("A highly approachable continuation of the Shannara saga.")

I clicked on a few more reviews to see if they're all this bad.  And unfortunately, they are.  I clicked on one of the books that Kirkus said was like Bearers of the Black Staff.  It was Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson.  Couple of comments here.  (1) The review was exactly the same style (one introductory sentence, a paragraph of plot summary, one concluding sentence).  (2) Thomas Covenant books are NOTHING like Terry Brooks.  Yeah, maybe Stephen R. Donaldson is a little wordy but there is just a world of difference there.

Next one I clicked on was featured on the home page, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I thought, let's choose something which is not in the fantasy genre.  Nope, same formula for the review.

I mean, I guess Kirkus reviews are well-known, but I am just not impressed. If I ever get published and they ignore me, I'm OK with that.

Here's a non-Kirkus review I read some time ago and thought was hilarious, has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this post as it rips apart Meghan McCain's attempt at political commentary, but as a review that actually engages and interacts with and comments on a book, it's top-notch.  And funny.

Website I Found

Poking around online to find topics for this blog, I found this:

Free Online Novels

There's a fantasy section.  I didn't download a lot of the novels (not all of them are actually free, despite the site's disclaimer).  But the few I did, well, I think I can see why publishers didn't bite.

If you are self-publishing (in a free format), chances are no one knows who you are.  So an entire story about your writing life, taking up several entire pages, from the time you were 13, is not terribly interesting.  Also, it's "foreword," not "forward."  If you think it's "forward," you don't actually read very many books yourself

I mean, hey, I applaud your effort to get your work out there.  Because I'm working on a novel right now, I KNOW it's difficult.  I know just how much effort it takes.  But the stuff I'm seeing on that website, I just don't think is going to find much of an audience, nor is it going to find a traditional publisher.  I didn't read more than a few paragraphs of anything I downloaded because I just couldn't take the writing.

Will Amazon Kill Off Publishers?

Interesting discussion from the New York Times website:

Will Amazon Kill Off Publishers?

Couple of comments...I actually know the publishers of most books I read.  I share Thomas Glave's concerns about the lack of editing.  But then, I've seen some serious lack of editing in novels from real publishers lately.  It's great for writers who have a hard time selling their work elsewhere.  Naturally the publisher doesn't care for this trend.

Not a tl;dr discussion at all.  All of the essays are short, they all make valid points, and the comments are good too (though the comments fall into the tl;dr category).

FYI, I happen to love Amazon.com.  Since I'm writing a manuscript, I'm following developments in this field closely.  I have bought a lot of books there in the last 12 years or so, especially used paperbacks and volumes of various series missing from the Barnes and Noble shelves.  (Speaking of which, I think I'm going to brave B&N again this weekend; hopefully their rearranging of the fantasy and science fiction section is done and they'll actually have the new books back out on the shelves.)

Side note: I have a new hobby, posting videos of my cats on YouTube.  I need to write a whole lot of posts this weekend as I only have one backup post left for this blog.  I prefer to have 9 or 10.

Night Shade Books

I am noticing more and more things I like from Night Shade Books:

• New authors, including Bradley P. Beaulieu and Courtney Schafer
• New releases and/or re-releases from Glen Cook (e.g. A Path to Coldness of Heart and An Ill Fate Marshalling)

I found the following paragraph on their website: "In 2010 Night Shade Books began a concentrated effort to build on a fundamental we have always believed in, to provide a space for new voices and authors in genre fiction."

I think this is pretty cool and I will definitely be checking out more of their titles in the future.

World Fantasy Awards

Well, finally an awards list where I'm familiar with at least some of the books...

Finalists for the World Fantasy Best Novel Award from the Washington Post

I've only read N.K. Jemisin's (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms) and Guy Gavriel Kay's (Under Heaven) entries on this list, though I've heard of some of the others and plan to check them out eventually.

I wonder a little about the timeliness of books on this list, as I read Jemisin's second novel in the same series (The Broken Kingdoms) months and months ago, and Under Heaven way before I started this blog, too.

Still, I think N.K. Jemisin and Guy Gavriel Kay are both pretty good.  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not typical of the types of books I like, what with the major presence of the gods and all.  (I've mentioned in the past that I hate wars of the gods in fantasy novels.)  But Jemisin does it very well, in a unique way that doesn't bother me, for whatever reason.  I enjoyed her second book too and am looking forward to her third (The Kingdom of Gods).

Politics and the English Language

Someone recently sent me a link to a George Orwell essay.  While Orwell was writing about the decline of language for political and/or economic reasons, in 1946, I think a lot of his points are applicable to fiction writing today.

Politics and the English Language

I'll admit to not having read the entire thing; I just can't stand to read long paragraphs on a computer screen.

Here are some random thoughts I had while reading:

"It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes."

I wonder if preferring paper books to e-books is a sentimental archaism?

I thought the rules for writing were appropriate:

"(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

#5 is certainly applicable to fantasy writing.  While a foreign phrase might not apply, authors really ought to give pause to making up languages and using them when normal words will do.  The Golden Key is particularly bad about this, as is The Unremembered ("endfast" instead of "breakfast" and the repeated use of the word "stripling").

It's worth reading the essay to see Orwell's examples and reasons for generating the list of rules, especially if you're thinking of writing something.  He makes a lot of sense.  (Please don't judge me by these rules...I'm not so careful with this blog but I am extremely careful with my manuscript!)

I think Karen Miller's Olken dialect would give Orwell fits for an entirely different reason.  It certainly gives me fits.

Search Engines

Well, I have started thinking lately that I'd like to get more visitors to this blog.  I realized that my blog does not show up in Bing or Yahoo search results (took me awhile because I don't generally use Bing or Yahoo, and of course I was showing up in Google because Google owns Blogger).

Anyway, what a headache.  Have to sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools, then when they say they'll crawl the site within three days, they don't.  Yahoo Site Explorer says my blog is indexed but it still doesn't show up in search results.  And Yahoo auto-picked some dumb keywords.  ("Women?"  Really?  That's a keyword?)

Then I start reading in Blogger Help about site maps, and decided I need one to help search sites index my blog.  So I'm in the queue for that on a free site map generator because really, I don't want to make a site map by hand for over 170 posts.  So look for that soon.

I suppose I still need to get out there and post in forums and such, so there are links back to my own blog and my relevance in the search engine algorithms is increased.  There's only so much time in a day.  (Did get a hit for "6-foot iguana" because in my "about me" section, I mention that I have one of these as a pet.)

Also signed up for StatCounter because I had a weird thing happen today, over half my visits from the Netherlands, which I find unusual.  I mean, it's not Russia or Latvia or Ukraine, and I have had what I believe to be legitimate visits from the Netherlands before, but usually just a couple a week, with the US accounting for the majority of hits.

Anyway, if you are thinking of starting a blog, and you actually want people to see it, you have to do a lot of work.  Just saying.

Ideas

I need to start writing down my ideas.  I've got one manuscript which I'm currently editing, and it's the first of a trilogy plus some planned prequels and a second series set in the same world.  But now I have ideas for a number of other series.  The list is getting long, don't know when I'm going to find time to write all of these unless I win the lottery or something.

I wonder though...I keep getting all these ideas, and while they're all fantasy, the sub-genres are different (one is rather dark, one is "new weird," one is based on current events which I will remove to a fantasy setting, one is more whimsical and based on some unconfirmed or speculative ancient history).  I guess Glen Cook gets away with this sort of thing; the Black Company books are military fantasy, but there's also the Dread Empire, the Instrumentalities of the Night, and Garrett, P.I. and some science fiction I haven't read.  Not to mention the standalones (The Tower of Fear, The Swordbearer, and maybe a few others).

I also don't want to be accused of writing the same book over and over, so maybe if I change the world and the details, as well as the sub-genre, it'll be easier to stay away from that.  It may just turn out that people like some of my books and hate other ones.  We'll see.

And now I've seriously got to find my MacBook's power cord because I'm at 2% battery remaining.

How I Decide Which Book to Read Next

Regularly, I have 20+ books on the shelf I haven't yet read.  I only read one novel at a time.  So ever since I started this blog, here's how I (usually) choose what to read next:

I've mentioned before on this blog that the posts getting the most hits are my reviews.  So when I finish a book, and I'm looking for a new one to read, I often try to pick up titles that are new, or at least new in paperback.  If they're not so new, I may offer a justification for the relevance of writing a review of an older book.  (Anyway, I am trying to go back and find some "classic" fantasy literature that I may have overlooked.  So if there are other readers like me, then perhaps reviews of older books might alert people to novels they should read but haven't so far.)

So first off, I write reviews of newer books.  I thus read a lot of newer books.  When I can (I don't have a lot of free time...haven't picked up a book in two days, for example).  Sometimes when I'm trying to decide between two books, if one of them has gotten me hits via Google searches (usually on my library pages), especially if it's more than one hit, I might pick up the one people are searching for, first.  That's how I decided to read The Whitefire Crossing -- someone searched for it.  Because if people are searching, they want to read about a book.  And if I read the book, I have something to say about it, most likely.

On the topic of Google searches, I get some strange hits.  "Pumpkin burrito," "my teacher's boots," "and interesting," and "insect that is sneaky."  Can't do much with these.  Still, *most* of my Google hits are relevant, and give me an idea of what people might be interested in, in terms of fiction and fantasy literature and writing, so keep the searches coming.

Amazon Publishing

Found this in the New York Times awhile back:

Amazon Rewrites the Rules of Book Publishing

If you've read your 20 free articles for the month (I subscribe!) then the gist is that Amazon is now signing up authors, under a number of imprints, bypassing traditional publishing houses, and getting into the business of print and e-book publishing of new material all on its own.  (They do have one hell of a distribution system!)

Seems people are of mixed opinions on this.  For authors, I think it can be good.  More publishers, perhaps more creative control over works, etc.  It is for this reason that I, personally, am excited about it.  Of course traditional publishing houses and agents are worried about the loss of business, and some readers fear that quality may decline.  Traditional publishers have expertise in that regard that Amazon may not.  (But then, considering the crappy editing I've seen in a lot of novels from traditional publishers lately, maybe it won't be any different...)

Review - Blackdog

It's been awhile since I posted my last review; haven't had a lot of time for reading this week.  Just finished Blackdog by K.V. Johansen.  I haven't heard of Johansen before, though her bio in the back says she's written a lot of young adult fiction in the past.  Blackdog *could* be considered YA fiction, because there's only the smallest bit of sex, and while there's violence and death, it's not explored in gory detail.

I almost feel obligated to post this review on Amazon because right now, the ONLY review is from the Klausner-bot.  Although I haven't posted reviews there in the past, so I probably won't do it now (don't want to share a page with HK anyway).

I picked up this book because of the Raymond Swanland cover art (he also does a lot of Glen Cook's cover art) and the blurbs from James Enge and Tom Lloyd, both authors I like (who happen to also be published by Pyr, as is Johansen).  Don't be fooled by that, as Blackdog isn't much like Cook, Enge, or Lloyd, though I will say that Pakdhala, as a young girl who is an avatar of a goddess, shares some parallels with Booboo (a later name for Croaker and Lady's daughter who is stolen at birth) from the Black Company books, though unlike Booboo, Pakdhala/Attalissa actually wants to make things right again.

I have said in the past that I'm not keen on wars of the gods as a trope in fantasy novels, and Blackdog is, unfortunately, about a war of the gods.  I knew this going in, and bought it anyway.  I will say it does the war of the gods thing better than Green by Jay Lake, not in the least because the gods are all present from the beginning.  Johansen is up front about this; she doesn't drop it on us halfway through, and I do appreciate that.

In spite of the war of the gods theme, there is a lot to like about Blackdog.  The setting is unique and original.  James Enge's blurb says the religion is Tibetan-style, and I can kind of see this, though I'm not particularly familiar with Tibetan-style religion, though I do recognize some elements of Buddhism and Hinduism threaded throughout.  The goddess Attalissa repeatedly comes to earth as an avatar in human form; other gods exist, and seem to preside over specific localities, and they generally choose not to take human form (with some exceptions).  The new incarnations are conceived at the time of death of the old incarnations; these girls are brought with their mothers to a temple in the middle of a lake and when the infants are weaned, the mothers are sent away.  The gods very much take an active role in people's lives, intervening to help their followers in times of great need.

When the peace of Attalissa's temple is disturbed by Tamghat, a wizard who is also bodily host to a devil and thus quite powerful, the girl Attalissa escapes with her protector, a man known as Otokas who is host to a being called Blackdog, another devil (we find this out later) who the goddess bent to her will generations past.  The Blackdog has a drive to protect the goddess and is often in conflict with its human host.  Otokas is killed and the spirit of the Blackdog is taken up by Holla-Sayan, a caravan guard who also adopts the young Attalissa as his daughter, giving her the name Pakdhala.

Much of Pakdhala's story is that of a young girl growing up.  She seems to know that she's an avatar at the back of her mind, but learns to prefer life as a normal human, though she shows some degree of preternatural skills with regards to things like predicting the sex of an unborn camel or winning at backgammon.  She begins to show signs of being a wizard and thinks that's it, her goddess powers won't come even when she comes of age/reaches puberty.  Long periods of Pakdhala's story are skipped; presumably the intervening years are not very interesting in terms of the larger story.  I'm fine with this skipping of years; if nothing happens, the reader doesn't need to hear about it in agonizing detail.  Johansen picks the periods of time that are interesting and writes about those.

As one might expect, a resistance builds, constructed from the scattered remnants of the goddess's temple and sympathetic villagers and other individuals who don't care for Tamghat's rule (more on him later, he's an interesting one).  Some scenes are told from the POV of Attavaia, Otokas's niece and leader of this resistance, or free temple.  This resistance meets some setbacks, but somehow, conveniently, everyone involved keeps the free temple's secrets and no one really betrays Attavaia and her followers.  Even though they're collecting an arsenal under the noses of Tamghat's loyal retainers.  (There is one betrayal, of Pakdhala/Attalissa, by a caravan member who is jealous that Holla-Sayan gets to bring his daughter along on the caravan while she, Tusa, has to leave her children at home.  Her children are killed during some unrest, leaving her bitter, which is understandable.  The betrayal amounts to something, because it results in Pakdhala being captured by Tamghat.)

As a villain, Tamghat is more complex than most, but still doesn't really have any redeeming qualities.  He sees betrayal everywhere; executes his own wife/consort because she was plotting against him.  He trains his daughter as a wizard but he has so beaten her down (not necessarily physically, more mentally) that she has little confidence in her own abilities, doesn't see a way out, and it doesn't even occur to her to turn against him until she's prodded by Moth (another wizard host to a devil, who has taken it upon herself to rid the world of evil ones like Tamghat).  We are never sure who exactly is in control, Tamghiz or Ghatai, wizard or devil.  Or if they are even separate entities anymore.  This sort of excuses Tamghat's sometimes erratic behavior.  But I'm still not sure what Tamghat wants.  He wants to absorb the Blackdog, Attalissa, and more.  He kills -- or thinks he kills -- another goddess, he wants to take over the world.  But he's already immortal, it seems, and he's already got an army of loyal retainers, and powerful magic.  Maybe because he's part devil, we aren't meant to understand his goals, only that he's the enemy.  But Moth is the same type of being, and we DO understand her.  She has a lover, and hobbies, and a farm, and a life.  She also has duties, and a complex history, and a sense of right and wrong, and powerful magic as well.

Then, of course, is the issue of Tamghat's death.  The action is just a little unclear here, but it seems that Attalissa sacrifices herself (or Pakdhala's body) and Moth also kills Tamghat with her sword.  So I guess all the clues that neither one of them could kill him alone are leading to the fact that they both have to act (not necessarily in concert, and not necessarily with the same aims) to end this being.  I actually like this feature.  Attalissa recovers some of her powers but she's still not all-powerful, which I also like.  She doesn't just ride down from the hills and sweep through town and make everything okay again.  She has challenges, and human feelings, and is also a complex character.

One inconsistency with Attalissa...her body, Pakdhala's body, is dead.  But she re-forms a body that looks basically the same (minus some tribal tattoos) instead of being reborn into a new infant.  Granted, she tells everyone this is a time of change, letting her priestesses marry for the first time in ages, giving back territory that she took from a rival god's followers, ushering in a new era of peace.  So maybe she'll do something different with respect to her avatars, as well.  She goes from being quite human to something other than human, though.  While she picks a husband, her position as goddess alienates her from the caravan she's traveled with her whole life, including Holla-Sayan.

As for writing style, I don't find any technical errors.  Good grammar and proper spelling and all.  (I'm sorry, but judging from the quality of writing I've seen in other novels I've read lately, this does need to be mentioned.)  Narration and description is good.  One thing that is lacking is dialogue.  The longest conversations are often mental, between the Blackdog and the goddess, or between the Blackdog and Moth, or between Tamghat and his daughter.  Other conversations tend to be peppered with an awful lot of description.  You know, someone says something, and it's followed by a paragraph of narrative.  People don't have a lot of normal conversations.

The magical system is interesting.  There are numerous parts, which come from different parts of the world of this novel, and they're not always in harmony.  Certain magics go with certain mythologies.  But that's okay, because really, all the cultures described or hinted at in this novel see these things differently, as groups of people do in real life and have done throughout history.  There's a good deal of divination, from bones or tossing coins (almost exactly like the I Ching) or stones or astrology.  There are potions to control the mind.  There's necromancy in various forms, healing magic, ghosts, and use of talismans or fetishes (hair from the corpse of one of Attalissa's previous incarnations).  No one person truly has the use of all these, though Tamghat and his daughter come closest.  For the most part, the introduction of these elements seems natural in the world of Blackdog, and even though magic is diverse and widespread, it doesn't detract from the story, but rather is an integral part.

One topic I haven't touched on very much is the Blackdog himself.  He's a devil, like that in Moth or Tamghat, but for whatever reason, he's escaped the notice of the old Great Gods who have basically abandoned the world to their lesser, more local kin (Sera, Attalissa, Narva, Sayan, Kinsai, etc.).  So while Moth hunts down the others like Tamghat, Holla-Sayan, who has reconciled himself to the presence of the Blackdog in his body, is left to pursue his own life, minus his adopted daughter.  The Blackdog is a protector of Attalissa because he's bound, but he was some dying creature before he was bound, and the binding preserved his life, and it's really quite complicated, but it's suggested that Attalissa, in a previous incarnation, was not as innocent and peaceful as she is by the end of the book.  (I guess even gods can learn.)  Holla-Sayan, and sometimes Otokas before him, are described as being in near-constant states of struggle to keep the Blackdog down.  He's a fearsome warrior when he's unleashed, and single-minded in his actions to keep the goddess safe.  Despite this struggle, Holla-Sayan usually wins out, or at least that's how it seems.  He gets worse at it as the book goes on, but I guess then the goddess is in danger and the Blackdog's mission is more urgent.  I'll admit to not totally understanding what passes between Holla-Sayan and the Blackdog to make everything okay again, and to separate the Blackdog from Attalissa.

I realize I've focused a lot on a few main characters.  A number of supporting characters were a little flat, just a few details on a page.  Gaguush and Tusa and the original Old Lady have interesting backstories, but some of the others could've used more development.  I don't know whether there's going to be a sequel or not; there's some hinting at a cult from farther away that wants to usurp the local religions, so there could be a conflict being set up there.  Otherwise, I don't understand why that detail would've been included.  But we'll see.

I feel like I've given a lot of plot summary here, and I don't like doing that.  The world and magical system are interesting and unique.  For the most part, the difficulties the characters have to surmount are appropriate.  Most things are not too easy for them.  The villain is all bad, but still complex.  The good guys are not 100% good, they have flaws.  There's sadness, and sacrifice, and loss, but a bittersweet ending (the bad guy is defeated but there are some goodbyes).  So emotionally, I like the book and think I would recommend it.  At the very least, go buy it and post a review on Amazon.com so Harriet Klausner is not the only one there.  This book certainly deserves more than that!

Initials

Have you noticed there are a number of fantasy authors (mostly female) who publish with initials instead of names?

• K.J. Parker (poke around on the web; though anonymous, people are pretty sure she's female)
• J.K. Rowling
• J.V. Jones
• K.V. Johansen

I have read online discussions wherein people say at least some authors use initials because they fear a female name on the book will result in lower sales.  (I happen to have a gender neutral name.)

Anyhow, I don't have much to say about this, I just happen to think it's interesting.

Timelines

I've been thinking a lot about timelines in novels lately.  One thing I was concerned about with my own manuscript was the fact that a long time (about ten years) goes by without me describing the action.  Now, I don't believe it's interesting to write about things that happen in the time that I "skip" in the novel, if interesting things aren't happening to the characters.  If their daily lives are routine, I don't need to describe that.

I started thinking about other books I've read lately.  I remember remarking in my review of The Reluctant Mage that one of the few aspects of Karen Miller's writing I liked was that if characters were on a boring journey for three weeks, she just says "three weeks passed" instead of describing them setting up camp every single night.  Though three weeks is a far cry from ten years.

Then there's Blackdog by K.V. Johansen which I am reading right now; there are long periods in the story where nothing happens, and Johansen skips over them.  New sections of the book indicate how much time has passed (2 years, 5 years, etc.) between important events.  Now we're talking about the same order of magnitude, at least.  So maybe that's not so bad.

The other timeline issue is consistency.  I had a particular problem with one scene that includes three sets of characters.  They all are in the same place at the same time, and they leave this place, to meet up again later.  For two sets of characters, this is not a problem.  The problem is for one little boy, who is given an errand.  He has to lay up somewhere for 6-8 months in order for the timeline to work out.  I think I know what I'm going to do there, but I didn't realize how bad the problem was until I went back through and tried to determine how many weeks or months passed between each scene.

I was reading an Amazon.com forum the other day about A Dance with Dragons, which I still have not read yet, and apparently someone tried to assign a chronology or dates to the events in this and the preceding books in the series, based on things like pregnancies, and this person was unable to do so.  On the other hand, there's Tolkien, who purposefully assigned dates to events in The Lord of the Rings so that he could be consistent (e.g. in The Two Towers, which is split into two halves occurring concurrently in time).

I wonder what readers prefer?  I can't just not bother to fix the timeline in my own manuscript, I would notice, even if no one else did.  Well, it will be one thing reviewers can't criticize me for, if nothing else.

Slacking

I haven't worked on my manuscript for two days.  I mean, I suppose I have an excuse...this week has been kind of all over the place.  Wednesday I was in a car accident (minor, no injuries, but have to deal with police, insurance companies, and rental car), then my parents came to town Thursday and Friday was my birthday.  I've also started exercising again.  So I've been busy.

But, I think the truth of it is, I don't like editing as much as I like writing.  Now, I'm at the point where there is some writing involved -- because I've started going back through and doing some initial rewording and adding in scenes where I think I need more background.

At least I believe editing is needed.  The first draft is never great, and I can't totally count on a publisher, if I find one, to provide a good editor, based on some of the books I've actually read lately.

At any rate, I fully intend to make up for the lost days, and I'm not sick of the manuscript yet.  All this editing will make me know every bit of it, backwards and forwards, and that will help with consistency in subsequent volumes.

Science Fiction Revisited

Spent a lot of time browsing the web looking for material to write things about in this blog, and came across this:

Shades of preference in storytelling

I particularly enjoy the discussion of world building and fudging technical details (e.g. faster than light travel) for the purpose of a story.  I am one of those people, who, while not a physicist, hates bad science.  I tend to notice it more in fantasy, where you most definitely CAN have bad science, usually biology, which is closer to what I know, since one of my BS degrees is in biology.

I wonder, is there a difference between changing the laws of physics on purpose and just simply not knowing that you don't understand the physics you're trying to write about?  From a reader's perspective, I'm not sure it matters.  (At least if I'm the reader.)  At least in fantasy, you have magic.  (But unless you specifically mention magic to describe your giant insects or crab people, I'm assuming you don't know what you're talking about.)

Fake Books

It never even occurred to me that someone would try to do this:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Authors?

I complain about fake reviews all the time, but fake books?  (Or rather, expensive printouts of Wikipedia content.)

I've never come across this, but of course I don't spend a lot of time reading nonfiction.  Or if I do read nonfiction, it's related to biochemistry and/or analytical chemistry and I get it from my school's library or online.  I hope I would recognize one of these books when I came across it.  At least I know a publisher to avoid...

Untitled Post

I really can't think of a good title for this post.  I don't want to call it "Interview with Richard Morgan" because I didn't interview him and I don't want to mislead anyone.  But I did find this interview with him online, so I figured I'd pass it on.

I'm not terribly familiar with his work, except The Steel Remains, which I read around the time it came out.  I liked the book, despite the graphic depictions of sexual activity.  (I also like the work of Joe Abercrombie).

I won't summarize the interview, because you are perfectly capable of clicking on the link and reading it yourself.  I will briefly mention one of his opinions which is rather opposed to others expressed in this blog in the past -- I don't mind the YA fantasy thing Morgan seems to hate so much.  I prefer books for adults, of course, but I read YA fantasy sometimes.  Even if you don't get into Harry Potter and its ilk, Philip Pullman is amazing.

At any rate, Morgan sounds like an interesting guy.  Looking forward to reading The Cold Commands.

The Future of Science Fiction

Found this article in the Wall Street Journal (a publication, which, whenever I mention it, I feel the need to add a qualification that I don't normally read it, because I want to distance myself from as much that Rupert Murdoch touches as possible -- though my dad subscribes and when I lived with my parents, found the WSJ to make excellent bird cage liner, much better than the local papers from back home).

I don't read a lot of science fiction, to be honest.  I can't stand the science.  I've posted on that before, I think.  I'm working on a graduate degree in chemistry and every time I come across bad science -- in fantasy or science fiction -- I cringe (e.g. Terry Brooks's ideas about evolution or the people from four different universes living in the same space ship in Anathem by Neal Stephenson).  I don't mind a post-apocalyptic tale every now and then; I've enjoyed Octavia Butler's work, for example.

It's interesting to read, in the linked article, about the crossovers (slipstreaming) of mainstream authors into more speculative and/or fantastic sorts of writing projects.  It's also interesting to see that some people are of the opinion that fantasy is edging out sci-fi in the popular mind (the Lord of the Rings movies, Harry Potter, and the Game of Thrones miniseries surely contribute to this opinion).  I'll admit, I don't actually have an opinion on whether or not science fiction is losing ground.  Even though it is always shelved with fantasy at Barnes and Noble, if I see a spaceship on the cover of a book, I walk right by (same with a woman in leather carrying a big sword, a vampire, or most werewolves -- with an exception for The Wolf Age by James Enge, which I enjoyed very much).

Still, a lot of people read both fantasy and science fiction, and if you want an in-depth discussion and some ideas for new reading material, click the link in the first paragraph.

Does Every Writer Go Through This?

Having a major crisis of confidence here.  Nearly everything I can think of to doubt about my manuscript, I'm doubting.  Here's a (partial) list:

• Characters aren't complex, interesting, or sympathetic enough
• Bad guys are too evil (one-dimensional)
• Magic is inconsistent
• Writing style is juvenile or hack-ish
• I got the timeline all wrong

I don't think I really believe all of that.  And I've only just started the editing and revision process.  Pretty much everything in that list is fixable.  I actually made it this far, once before, with a manuscript.  Wrote it by hand over a period of months, typed it.  Then decided it was crap and threw the whole thing out.

I'm not going to do that, this time.  I have had this story in my head for more than five years, in one form or another.  I'm proud of myself for putting it down on paper.  And I think I can make it something pretty good, if I keep working on it.  I guess I'm just doomed to these periods of self-doubt.  Maybe because I have a birthday approaching (on Friday I turn 34, not a milestone exactly, just depressing because I'm a sixth-year grad student more than 10 years older than the first-year PhD students in my grad program).

New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Publisher

Google news hasn't brought me much lately (I have an alert for "fantasy fiction" which I'll admit is a rather specific term) but here is one item of interest:

Amazon expands into SF publishing

I'm, of course, happy to see that print books will be offered in addition to Kindle books.  I'm always excited to find new publishers of fantasy novels -- of course it means more money out of my bank account!

Dark Children's Books?

Found this on the New York Times website the other day:

No More Adventures in Wonderland

It contrasts classic children's literature, by Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie, with some of the books coming out these days.  Young adult fantasy is, as a result of Harry Potter, quite popular these days.  But it's not the same type of fantasy, exactly, that we see in Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan.

Lots of characters die in the Harry Potter books, of course.  I'd argue that there's also a sense of wonder in them, that hearkens back to some of the classics.  Harry's initial amazement at Diagon Alley, and Platform 9 3/4, and Gringotts, and the Knight Bus, and house elves and dragons and goblins are all examples of this.  It does seem like the series itself undergoes a transformation; the earlier books are much lighter in mood.

But I'm not going to re-hash the examples from the New York Times piece.  It's an interesting read and includes mention of a couple of titles I'm not familiar with, but will likely now check out.

Review - The Whitefire Crossing

I've had a lot of short posts lately (not a lot of time to write them), so here's a longer one.  The Whitefire Crossing is a book by a new author, Courtney Schafer, that I took a chance on during a recent trip to Barnes and Noble.

Overall, I have a positive impression of the book.  I read it quickly and am looking forward to the sequel.  Schafer is a first-time author with a day job, a kid, and lots of hobbies (mostly the sorts of outdoor activities I avoid like the plague), but I think she does a decent job of using her life experience (with mountain climbing, at least) to enrich the story.

The main characters are Dev, a smuggler, and Kiran, a mage.  Dev's sections are told in the first person, while Kiran's are in the third person.  This technique, while a little unusual with a two-viewpoint novel, does serve to clearly delineate which sections are Dev's and which Kiran's, though there are also parenthetical character names before each section that could also clear up doubt in this regard.  The viewpoint alternates pretty evenly between the two of them, and one thing that Schafer does a good job of is making both characters' sections interesting.  For example, there's a section later in the book where Kiran is held prisoner and Dev is trying to figure out how to rescue him.  Dev is running about town, recruiting an ally, etc., but stuff is happening to Kiran too (he's not just laying around unconscious or anything).  Of course, during the first half of the book, Dev and Kiran are on a journey together, so essentially the same things are happening to both of them -- but in the first half of the book, they're not exactly allies, and there is some distrust between them.  Their views of the same events are thus somewhat different.

I personally liked Dev's sections a little better, maybe he was a more interesting character or just had a better personality.  Not sure.  I think Schafer's writing was better in Dev's sections.  Not that Kiran's were bad, I'm just expressing a preference here.

Probably I should have a bit of plot summary, or at least set the scene, so my comments make sense...Dev normally smuggles goods across the mountainous border between his country/city (Ninavel) and Alathia, which neighbors Alathia.  He's saving to help his mentor's daughter (more on this later) but has recently been "relieved" of his savings by a former partner, and when he's offered the chance to smuggle a person -- Kiran -- out of Ninavel, for a great deal of money, he jumps at the chance.  Kiran, meanwhile, is a blood mage (more on this later) who wishes to escape his master, Ruslan, who has done some terrible things to a girl Kiran loved.  Dev doesn't know, at first, what Kiran has to hide, and tells the others in their caravan that Kiran is his apprentice.  There are two characters in the caravan who are important later -- Cara, the leader of the outriders who scout the mountains for danger, and Pello, whose job I'm not exactly sure of, except that he's some type of strongman for a banker or trader and no one trusts him.

Anyway, Kiran's master gets wind of Kiran's location, and Dev and Kiran have to leave the caravan.  Kiran ends up getting caught by another mage, and the second half of the book is the story of his escape from this second mage (Simon).  One more important detail -- Alathia doesn't allow much in the way of magic, so Kiran is going to have trouble crossing the border.

The magic system is at once inventive and also troublesome, for me as a reader.  There are two types of magical abilities, one which is akin to the sorcery we see in a lot of other fantasy novels and one called the "Taint" which affects many children born in Ninavel, a city where a number of sorcerers have settled over the years.  Strongly Tainted children are a valued commodity, as they have the ability to move objects without touching them, and can be employed to steal, etc.  Sorcerers and the wards they create cannot sense the Taint.  However, children lose the Taint around the time of puberty, and are often re-sold for less savory purposes (which is an upcoming danger for Dev's mentor's daughter).  One could make the case for a third kind of magic, that of charms, of which most seem to be able to be used by average people.  However, these seem to be made by magicians or sorcerers, so they may fall into the first category.

All-in-all, this is an interesting system, but the details start to get out of hand after awhile.  In the acknowledgments section, Schafer says this book started out as a NaNoWriMo project, and I can sort of tell.  I feel like maybe the overarching scheme of the magic system was worked out in advance, but she made up the details as she went along.  Just when I think I have a grasp of everything, there's a new detail that feels like it was invented on the spot.  First we are told that the Alathians don't allow magic.  Then they just don't allow unregistered mages.  And all authorized mages have to be in the military.  Dev has to smuggle charms into Alathia.  But then there are some weak charms that are allowed, after all.  Kiran describes one spell as "thirteenth level" midway through the book, and I'm thinking, when were these levels introduced?  This is the first mention of this, and levels for mages only comes up one more time, very late in the story.  Probably it wouldn't have hurt to leave this part out; there was enough going on here already.

At any rate, the magic in the book could maybe have been thought through a little more in advance.  At least the details of it -- for consistency's sake.  Moving on...

A bigger problem -- and this is a personal opinion, as this phenomenon is certainly very common in fantasy these days -- is that the bad guys are just too evil, they don't have any redeeming qualities.  Ruslan and Simon (the blood mages who are fighting over control of Kiran) are not very nice men.  Ruslan kills with impunity, and is severely prejudiced against people who are poor and/or have no magical talent.  Simon has a number of servants whose minds he's broken down in some way so that they don't fight him or rat him out, since he's been living in Alathia for some time.  Also, Simon wants to take charge of Ninavel from Lord Sechaveh, who founded the city.  So he's power-hungry, too.  Even Pello seems to be motivated only by self-preservation, although in the end, we're not sure how much of what he's saying is truth or not.  Pello, if he returns, could go either way in the next volume and still be believable.

I personally prefer antagonists who are more complex.  I struggle with this in my own writing; I know that as I revise my current manuscript, there are a few characters who need to have a few redeeming qualities and/or motivations inserted.  I'll admit it can be difficult to see the one-dimensional characters in your own work.  But in real life, no one is good all the time and no one is bad all the time.  I think Steven Erikson does this pretty well, as does Daniel Abraham.  (Well, Erikson has so many characters a few of them are flat, but a lot of them are quite complex as well.)  With regard to Schafer's protagonists, Dev and Kiran ARE quite well done, with redeeming qualities as well as flaws.  Cara is a little weak in some areas; she has this rule never to sleep with coworkers but then breaks it with Dev.  However, she is strong in others -- she is quite a good caravan outrider, takes her responsibilities seriously, knows the work, etc.

I'm not totally happy with the ending, wherein Kiran is forced to help the Alathians understand more of what Simon has done and Dev is sent to a prison camp.  The prison thing just sort of came out of nowhere.  I mean, we knew Dev was smuggling, and likely to get punished for that, but Kiran got out of a death sentence.  It seems a little unbalanced; Kiran committed what were considered much more serious crimes by the Alathians, but Dev gets a much harsher punishment.  It does set up some possibilities for the next volume in the series, though.

One thing I kept wondering, as I read this, was why the people of Ninavel seemed to like Sechaveh so much.  Dev and the others occasionally mention Sechaveh, usually thinking to inform him of events.  They never once question his leadership until one of the Alathians questions Dev about it at the end, and it's kind of like, oh yeah, maybe he's not all he's cracked up to be.

Gee, I've just spent a long time pointing out flaws in this book -- a book which I actually enjoyed reading.  So let's end with a blurb.  I found that I really did care about the characters and their fates (well, Dev and Kiran, at least).  The Whitefire Crossing was a fast-paced fantasy adventure and a promising venture from a first-time author.  I look forward to more from Courtney Schafer.

Research

Have you ever been impressed by the amount of research that went into a fantasy novel, where an author tries to create an authentically medieval world?  Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series was like this, I thought.  (Though if you go seeking it out, be forewarned that it drags on way too long.  Should've been about 5 volumes, not 7.  But I digress.)

Another one you might not notice is A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay.  But if you have read either of the following, then you'll see some of Kay's influences (he does acknowledge them):

• Life in a Medieval City
  
• Life in a Medieval Castle

Actually, Kay is an excellent example of incorporating research without the reader realizing it's research.  The details fit the story, if you've read his primary source material, without being overbearing and/or pointed out at every available opportunity.

Major B&N Disappointment

I'm one of those people who actually pays the $25 for a Barnes and Noble membership.  I went there last night because it's been a few weeks, and I was SO DISAPPOINTED with the store, I left without buying anything.

They're rearranging the upper level of my local store to add more TOYS AND GAMES.  Argh.  This is not why I go to the bookstore.  (This is what they were doing to the Borders I used to go to, as well.  First more empty space, then more non-book products, then bankruptcy and going out of business entirely.)  I don't even see how they think they can compete with this; any Toys 'R Us or even Target or Walmart (all three of which exist within a few minutes' driving of this particular B&N location) probably has more toys and games, which are likely to be less expensive.

The sci-fi/fantasy section had moved.  It looks as if, when they are finished with it, it will be as big as (or bigger than) before, which is good.  But...last night, they had none of the new releases out.  No new hardcovers (I know The Cold Commands came out this week, but didn't see it anywhere -- I'm ordering it from the Science Fiction Book Club, though), no new trade paperbacks, no new mass market paperbacks.  While I do occasionally buy titles from among the older books, the way they usually set out the newer stuff does a better job of catching my eye.  Normally when I come to this store, I leave with $75 less in my bank account and a huge stack of books.  Mostly from among the newer fantasy titles.  (Occasionally cookbooks or yoga books although their yoga book section has sucked for awhile.)

Don't get me wrong, I love Amazon.com.  Its recommendation system is pretty good (I mean, hey, it uses my past Amazon purchases to predict what I might like and then recommends me things I already bought from somewhere else).  But there is no substitute for actually browsing through physical books.

Side note: Argh, my printer is no longer working.  Have to stop by MicroCenter and get a new one because I'm damned impatient and I want one today.  Why does this always happen when I have stuff to print?  I'm going laser printer this time, I don't print often enough to get another inkjet.

National Novel Writing Month

November is NaNoWriMo.  I'm not going to participate, for a couple of reasons...I only have about a half hour a day, maybe an hour on weekends.  I think I produce 25,000-30,000 words a month at this pace.  Not enough to satisfy the 50,000 word requirement.  But I really just don't have any extra time and I'm not sleeping enough as it is.  Also, if I write late at night, it really turns out to be a bunch of nonsensical crap, because I'm just too tired.

I just finished reading a book that started out as a NaNoWriMo project, The Whitefire Crossing.  I enjoyed the book, but there are some aspects of the story, particularly with the magical system, that seem hastily-developed, and it probably has something to do with the first draft being written in a month.  (I'm not trying to disparage the book, I hope to see more by Courtney Schafer in the future.  Review coming soon, if it hasn't shown up already by the time I post this.)

I do think NaNoWriMo is a good idea; it can get people (like Schafer) to actually work on ideas they've been bouncing around for awhile.  And clearly, sometimes these novels get published.  I don't even remember my own motivation for finally starting to write!  But I've been working since the end of April, I think.

Day Jobs

Writing doesn't pay the bills, except for a select few individuals.  I always find it interesting to read the "about the author" blurbs on back covers or book jackets.  Seems fantasy authors frequently have had a variety of unusual jobs.  Glen Cook's "about the author" section makes fun of this, noting that he's pretty much only worked for GM.  Here are some others I remember, or sort of remember (might not be 100% accurate but think I'm close):

• Terry Brooks used to be an attorney (not anymore)
• Liane Merciel still is an attorney (I think)
• Bradley P. Beaulieu and Carol Berg both had something to do with software engineering or computer programming
• Peter Orullian works for XBox Live
• Mark Charan Newton also works for a gaming company, and has been an editor of fantasy and sci-fi works
• Steven Erikson was an anthropologist or archaeologist
• Brandon Sanderson teaches some writing classes at BYU
• Patrick Rothfuss also teaches (or taught) English
• Kristen Britain was, at least at one time, a park ranger or some such

The reason for all the hesitation/qualification above is that I didn't go back and pick up books to see what the authors did, this was all from memory.  It's been awhile since I've read some of these.

Then there are the people who write for a living.  I think in a lot of cases, to do this, you'd have to either have a spouse with a good job, or always be wondering where your next paycheck is coming from, or else write some things purely for money without staying true to yourself (e.g. Forgotten Realms and other stuff like that, or Star Wars novels, or novelizations of movies).  I mean obviously, not everyone is going to be a J.K. Rowling, or Stephen King.

For myself, I will most likely be looking to do HPLC, UPLC, LC-MS, or LC-MS/MS at some company after graduation.  Preferably methods development with a little instrument maintenance on the side, as opposed to something more repetitive (unless I end up in a supervisory role and can pass of the repetitive measurements to people with only BS or MS degrees).  I'd also be pretty good at spectroscopic DNA-drug binding studies.  Nothing whatsoever to do with fantasy literature, but it's what I'm educated to do!

Final Word Count!

Finished typing my manuscript tonight -- 138,433 words, 276 single-spaced pages.  Next steps:

(1) spelling check
(2) sorting out the timeline
(3) making a list of aspects of the story I feel to be flaws and coming up with ways to fix them
(4) actually implementing what I come up with for #2 and #3
(5) self-editing

Anyhow, it's another milestone that I've passed and I'm happy about it.

Oops! (Or, This is Why We Edit)

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I am working on a novel.  I wrote the first draft by hand, a half hour a day (an hour on weekends) and now I am typing it.  I could get through maybe four handwritten pages in 30 minutes.  So I figured I would make some mistakes.  Here are a couple:

1. A man leaves town on a horse.  But he arrives at his destination in a ship.
2. One country has no real trees; they have to import wood to build ships.  But when a girl from said country is wanting to mark a location outside, she ties her kerchief on a low-hanging tree branch.
3. In one country, drinking alcohol, while not specifically banned, is a rare practice.  But a girl from this country teeters on the verge of becoming an alcoholic.

Anyway, the good thing is that I caught these things now, so when I get to the revision stage, I can fix them.  There are a couple of other things that need changing; I made some decisions on currency and weapons halfway through, so I need to fix these in the first part.  Also, I've caught a couple of places where characters' explanations for events are weak, or where implausibilities arise or there's not enough lead-up to an important event.  And if I can find these, then I'm positive someone else would be able to.

Bottom line?  First draft simply CANNOT be the only draft.  I fear it is too often, these days.  Or else someone just runs spell check on Word and that's that.

More Fun with Reviews

You may be wondering about the following link and image:



No, I am most definitely not suggesting you buy it.  But if you have some time to kill and want to laugh, peruse the reviews.  Definitely worth it.

If you know of any other items with similarly-entertaining reviews, please post links in the comments.  I complain about fake reviews a lot, but that's only when the fake reviews are masquerading as real ones.  When they're meant to be humorous, and when they're successful, well, I can appreciate that.

BFA Controversy?

I'm not British, haven't followed the British Fantasy Awards before (honestly didn't know they existed), haven't ever been to England, etc.  But I found this story through Google News and thought it was interesting:

British Fantasy Award winner returns prize

I do enjoy following controversies that unfold online.  But from reading the story at the link above, two thoughts come to mind: (1) You've got to have pretty thin skin if you're willing to return an award after reading comments made online.  You don't know how many are legitimate criticisms, how many are disappointed supporters of rivals, and how many are just trolls.  (2) It probably isn't proper if you win and you live with the guy who runs the awards.

Click on the links in the story and the comments.

Then again, I don't know if an award that only 116 people voted on really matters anyway.  (That was total votes in the "best novel" category, not just votes for the winner.)

An even better (but not fantasy-related) online controversy is the "arsenic bacteria" story from last year.  NASA has a big press conference, paper is held up in pre-print on Science online for six months, critics come from all over the place, and now the driving force behind that story can't even collect her fellowship because she doesn't have a lab to work in because no one wants to touch her with a 10-foot pole.

Review - The Price of Spring

The Price of Spring is the fourth and final installment of Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet.  It's been out in hardcover for a couple of years, and as a poor graduate student, I was waiting for a paperback, but I found out some time ago there wasn't going to be one, so I gave in and bought the hardcover.  (Previous volumes I got through the Science Fiction Book Club.)  That's why this review is coming so long after the publication date of this novel.

Beware of spoilers, as always.

Unfortunately, due to the long wait for a paperback that wasn't going to come, I forgot a lot of the details from the first three volumes in the series.  I remembered what an andat was, and that poets were the people who bind the andat, and I remembered the elaborate system of poses and gestural communication among the Khaiem.  I remembered major characters (mainly Otah and Maati), and I remembered the binding of the andat Sterile at the end of An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) and the devastating consequences of that.  But there were a lot of characters I didn't remember, so I wondered when I began if I would be struggling to catch up.

And actually, I didn't have much trouble.  Abraham did a really good job of reminding the reader who people were (Sinja, Idaan, Cehmai, Eiah, Kiyan) without being repetitive.  (As opposed to someone like Terry Goodkind who tells the story of how Richard met Kahlan in detail in every single book...)  The Galts, who still have fertile females but sterile males, have come to the cities of the Khaiem with daughters to marry to the Empire's fertile sons.  They are learning foreign customs, such as the poses, and it is through the mechanism of introducing the Galts -- especially Ana -- to the nonverbal communication of the Khaiem that the reader is reminded of this aspect of the story's culture.  We are told early on, after the Galts' initial arrival, that the sterile women of the Empire are offended and choose to leave the Galts out of conversations and/or deeper meanings by relying largely on elaborate poses that the Galts simply don't understand.  Later, we hear of Ana's awkward attempts at poses, though she does seem to get better by the epilogue.  But this is just one example of how we're reminded of the world Daniel Abraham has built, without being beaten over the head with it.  I suspect if I hadn't remembered the andat and how they're bound, that the female poets' attempts to do so in this book would have served as reminders of that concept, as well.

In fact, this book *almost* works as a standalone, and that's quite a compliment for the fourth volume of a series!

A lot of times in reviews, I harp on language, but really, Abraham and/or his editor(s) did a great job.  It's not quite Guy Gavriel Kay lyrical, but it's pretty close, especially with the descriptions of small details.  (And for what it's worth, the small details don't get boring, like they do in some other books I've reviewed lately.  Instead, they really add to the depth and breadth of the world Abraham has created.)

Otah and Maati are the primary viewpoint characters (there are some exceptions for the prologue and epilogue), and we alternate back and forth between what's happening with each of them.  Otah is trying to see to the survival of Galt and the Empire, which were both horribly crippled by the andat Sterile in An Autumn War.  His solution, of marrying Galtic women to men of the cities of the Khaiem, is one option for ensuring future generations exist.  Maati, meanwhile, has gathered a group of women, with a different solution -- binding an andat that can reverse the problems.  He figures that women's minds are different enough from men's that they can more easily bind an andat than can a man, because generations of poets have gone before, and once an andat has been bound and lost, it is exceedingly difficult to recapture its essence.  (But perhaps a new way of thinking might succeed.)  So we know, pretty early on, that the central conflict of the book is going to be between these two different strategies for fixing the damage Sterile has caused.

In the end, neither strategy alone succeeds, but a melding of both of them is pursued.  The merits of both sides are seen, and merged.  The flaws of both sides are acknowledged.  It's not just black and white, and I appreciate that.

The main villain in this book, if you can call her that, precisely, is Maati's student Vanjit.  She lost her family to the Galts and appears at first to be in a state of despair.  Maati has lost many students trying to bind andat previously, but Vanjit is the first success, and she becomes quite full of herself, refusing to do chores, cultivating petty jealousies and rivalries with Maati's other students, etc.  The andat she binds is called Clarity-of-Sight and after awhile, she starts using her andat to remove sight from others, causing blindness.  The relationship between Vanjit and her andat is complex and extremely well-developed.  Eventually, she uses Clarity-of-Sight to make all Galts go blind.  She's still not satisfied, and we, along with Maati, Eiah, and the other students, learn that Vanjit will never be satisfied, she'll never get over losing her family to the Galts, even if she destroys the entire world.  She doesn't necessarily start out mentally ill, but we get that feeling about her by the end.  Controlling her andat for a long period of time takes its toll on her.

The story of Vanjit provides a nice counterpoint to Eiah, who also eventually gains control of an andat called Wounded.  In one neat stroke, she mortally wounds Vanjit and cures the world of all injuries, including Galtic blindness and the sterility induced on both sides of that conflict.  She then *releases* Wounded, rather than trying to keep him bound and having to struggle through the antagonistic relationship Vanjit had with Clarity-of-Sight.  I thought this was a clever turn of events, not expected based on the previous three volumes but definitely in character with Eiah as physician and with her travails during the course of The Price of Spring.

If I had to pick out weaknesses, it would be difficult to do so.  Mostly, these would center around Otah's children.  Eiah is furious with her father for arranging marriages between Galtic women and men from the Empire, her own brother included.  She thinks this hugely devalues the infertile women of the Empire.  Now, maybe she is right.  But I guess I see things more from Otah's perspective -- if Galt and the Empire are going to survive, there has to be a next generation, and the only way that is going to happen is through intermarriage.  Eiah has a different solution, working with Maati to bind an andat that can fix fertility problems.  I suppose this is also a good solution, though if we've learned anything in the past three volumes, it's that the andat are unpredictable and difficult to work with, and extremely dangerous.  This is not really what I have a problem with, it's more how easily Eiah reconciles with Otah later on, after spending the entire book being angry with him and working with his enemy.  Granted, the times are desperate -- many individuals have been blinded by Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight, including Eiah.  But she just goes from total antagonism towards her father to being part of the happy family again, once her own andat solves all the problems that Vanjit's created.  It wasn't an unnatural conclusion to events, just wish a little more time had been spent with the reconciliation and Eiah's change of heart, I suppose.

The other thing that was a little weak for me was Ana Dasin's change of heart.  So Ana is the Galtic girl who is chosen as a bride for Otah's son Danat.  Danat seems more than willing to accept this, though Ana has a lover and wants nothing to do with the wedding, causing great embarrassment to her parents and to Otah and calling the whole Galtic/Empire union into question.  She loses interest in her lover, as teenagers are wont to do, and gets blinded by Vanjit with all the rest of the Galts.  She goes on the journey with Otah and Danat to find Eiah and Maati, and by the end, she and Danat are not only in love, but Ana's a couple of months pregnant.  I felt like her transformation was also just a little too easy, or that I was missing something here.  You can explain some things away as the capriciousness of girls in their teens, but not everything.

Still, these are relatively minor criticisms, and I feel like the conclusions to both aspects of the story aren't unnatural (sorry for the double negative), just a little hastier than I would've liked.  Overall, I really had to reach to even come up with these criticisms.  And to be fair, since the story was told from Otah's and Maati's perspectives, I suppose we can't completely delve in to the minds of non-viewpoint characters, but only observe their actions through the eyes of others.

I'd actually recommend the entire series.  The world is unique, with an Asian feel to it, and a magic system unlike any other I've seen in a fantasy novel.  There's a pathos to it, especially the final volume, but also hope.  The characters are themselves complex, and have complex relationships with each other.  Villains are not one-dimensional, and often devastating events are the unintended consequences of actions that characters intend to be altruistic or benevolent.  ("The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and all.)  Even without the fantasy elements, I think this series would have the makings of a few good novels, and that's saying something; too many authors use the details of their fantasy worlds to hide flaws in their stories.  Daniel Abraham manages to balance the elements of good literature with the elements of great fantasy world construction.

Self-Publishing e-Books

I've written here about self-publishing before.  (If you don't feel like clicking through, basically, you don't sell a lot of books, it can cost a lot of money, etc.)  I'd probably do it, but only if all other options were exhausted.

Came across this on the New York Times website recently:

Perseus Creates New Service for Authors Seeking to Self-Publish

You do have one hurdle to jump here; the service, which has pretty good terms for authors, is only available to those who are represented through an agency that has a deal with Perseus.  You do get marketing and some other stuff in exchange.  It's definitely a trend to watch, however.

Apple Computer

So I received this story in my e-mail inbox via the New York Times alert I have set up:

My Muse Was an Apple Computer

Made me reminisce about my family's first computer, an Apple IIc.  I remember Appleworks and Bank Street Writer and learning to type and program in Apple Logo in the gifted program in elementary school on Apple IIe computers.  (They used to test us by putting men's running shorts over the keyboards; we'd have to stick our hands through the legs and type without looking at the keys.)  Then of course came high school, where there were some early Macs.  Did a lot of assignments on those, and took an entire class on Hypercard, where I made a pretty cool quiz game for 1995, complete with embedded animations and QuickTime movies.   Had an iMac DV after college and played quite a bit with iMovie, mostly making movies of my pet hamsters.  A couple of other ones in there, along the way.

I've been an Apple person pretty much my whole life.  I had a brief period in early grad school where I had a couple of Dells, not because I wanted them but because they were cheap and George W. Bush was giving us the $600 tax rebate and of course grad students never have any money.  But when the last Dell broke after only two years, I spent more than I make in a month on a MacBook Pro and I haven't looked back.

This blog has been composed exclusively on a Mac, and my manuscript is being typed on a Mac.  I'm on my third iPod (over the course of maybe 7 years?).  I don't have any other gadgets from Apple because I have no money.

I suppose this post doesn't have too much to do with fantasy literature.  But it does -- marginally -- have to do with how I write.  And it seems appropriate, considering everyone else in cyberspace is mourning Steve Jobs this week.

Can't Believe It Took Me This Long...

...to realize that the New York Times website has just as many ads as this blog.  The difference is that they probably actually make money off them.

Seriously, though, while I might have had grand ideas at the beginning, I think of this blog now as more of a hobby, a way to think about fantasy literature, what I like and don't like about it, and so forth.  As I write, and I come across articles on writing, or on the genre, or as I discuss tropes and conventions from novels I've read, I get a lot of ideas to make my own writing better.

And now, to figure out why Drosophila just landed on my MacBook screen -- I think that's the first fruit fly I've seen since I've lived here.  Usually I get gnats instead, when I have lots of old fruit pulp from my juicer in the trash.

Character Names

I've often felt that some character names I come across in fantasy novels are about as stupid as the romantic interest in this comic:

Pearls Before Swine

There is one series of books I have read most of (it shall remain nameless for now, although a review is likely coming in the next few weeks) where characters are named after rocks, to the point of ridiculousness.  (Jasper, Shale, Feldspar, etc.)

Seriously, choosing names from a group of nouns like that isn't very grounded in how actual humans name their children.  At least not first names.  (An argument could be made that last names...Cooper, Chandler, etc....came about sort of like that.)

Might as well name them after breakfast items: Pancake, Waffle, Quiche, Fritter, Bagel, Doughnut, Yogurt, Oatmeal, Muffin, Coffee Cake, Banana Bread, Cheerios...

Progress

I realized that I have mostly been talking about other people's writing lately, whether it's books, online reviews, or things I find in newspapers, and haven't focused a lot on my own.  So this entry is dedicated to my progress on my own manuscript.

I learned something about Microsoft Word lately.  When you get past 100,000 words, you no longer see the word count at the bottom of the window.  At least, that's how it is in Word 2008 for Mac.  At least the word count menu feature still works.

I am finding that my most common typo is "HE" at the beginning of a sentence.  "SHe" gets auto-corrected, but "HE" doesn't.  Also, I have the spelling and grammar turned off, because they make the Mac version of Word crash.  Spell-checking may take a couple of days.  I figure it's good to do this (spell check) once after I finish each stage of the manuscript.

I've been typing away at my handwritten manuscript.  It's going much faster than the actual writing did, actually.  I've already spotted a few holes in plot and/or reasoning for characters' actions, but being aware of them is half the battle.  I've also found a few story elements I'd change, because I think they could be better a different way.  But overall, I'm happy with my first effort.  As a first effort.

I've typed 105,000 words so far, and it's 209 pages single spaced.  I still probably have somewhere between a quarter and a third of the original text left to go.  Then comes revising.

Solitary? Anonymous? Or Something Else?

First, let me say that it's nice to see something about a fantasy author other than George R.R. Martin in the New York Times.

Jim Butcher, One of the Authors from Ambermush

Reading this story has made me think about the writing process.  In a way, it takes guts, writing at the spur of the moment in a forum where anyone can read it.  I don't think I could do that.  I admire people who can.

I never have been into online gaming of any sort, it's just not my thing.  (I do love the non-online Final Fantasy games.)  Other than this blog, where I share thoughts about writing and reading anonymously, reading and writing are solitary pursuits for me, for the most part.  (My boyfriend is working his way through the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and we discuss it periodically.)  I'm sure it would add another dimension to have discussions with other people, and share work, and maybe this will happen eventually.  I think a lot of people I know would be surprised to find out I've written the first draft of a fantasy novel.

It probably would be nice to connect to a wider group of enthusiasts.  I feel a little isolated, at times.  You know, I just don't have a lot of free time for creative pursuits, being a full-time graduate student and needing to think about my PhD defense in less than a year and looking for a job and all.  Maybe that's just an excuse, though.  I have managed to make time for writing and blogging, I can probably find time for being part of a writing community if I want to.  Maybe this blog is a first step, my introduction to an online community of writers and readers of fantasy fiction.

Anyway, I'm not sure this entry had much of a point, other than me being bored waiting for my car to be repaired.  I suppose there'll always be a few posts that are not quite as inspired as others.

Cover Art Revisited

So one of the nice things about free WiFi in like every business is that while I am waiting several hours for the privilege of paying $500 to have my brakes fixed (thank goodness for American Express), is that I can surf the web.  Here are a couple of links I found:

The glory of bad SF and fantasy cover art from The Guardian which includes some commentary on trends in cover art

Good Show Sir, an online gallery of awful fantasy and science fiction cover art

You can submit your own images to Good Show Sir.  I think I will spend some time there now...